Automatica, September 2005, Volume 41, No. 9

Editorial

Change of an editorship

Paul Van den Hof, who has been Editor for Rapid Publications since January 1999, is relinquishing his position with Automatica effective with this issue, due to increased responsibilities he has taken on recently at his university, Delft University of Technology. Paul has been with Automatica for a total of 13 years now, with the first 7 years being as an Associate Editor. In his role as Editor for Rapid Publications, he has brought new blood, energy, and dynamism to “Rapid Publications,” and has left behind a healthy operation. I thank Paul for his dedicated service and contributions to Automatica, and wish him well in his future endeavors.

As Paul's successor, I am pleased to announce that André L. Tits is taking over the Editorship of “Rapid Publications,” starting with this issue. André has been with Automatica before, for many years as an Associate Editor, before taking on the position of Editor for Technical Notes and Correspondence with the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC) some years ago, which he held until May 1, 2005. He will bring to Automatica in this new capacity a wealth of experience from both his editorship with TAC as well as his earlier associate editorship with us.

I again express our appreciation to the retiring editor, Paul Van den Hof, for his services to Automatica, and welcome new editor André Tits back to Automatica in this new capacity.

Tamer Başar
Editor-in-Chief

André L. Tits
Editor for Rapid Publications

André Tits was born in Verviers, Belgium on April 13, 1951. He received the ‘Ingénieur Civil’ degree from the University of Liège, Belgium and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, all in Electrical Engineering, in 1974, 1979, and 1980, respectively.

Since 1981, André has been with the University of Maryland, College Park. Currently, he is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and holds a permanent joint appointment with the Institute for Systems Research. He has held visiting positions at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Lund Institute of Technology, at INRIA, at the Catholic University of Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and at the Australian National University.

André’s main research interests lie in various aspects of numerical optimization, optimization-based system design and robust control with emphasis on numerical methods. In addition to carrying out fundamental research work in these areas, researchers in his group have developed several software packages. Especially popular is FSQP, a tandem of sophisticated software suites for nonlinear constrained optimization, in use at over 1000 sites around the world. André Tits received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1985, and is a Fellow of IEEE.